Tuesday, December 28, 2004

As a function of my vacation and the ability to stay up late (thank god I don't have to hear the alarm go off at 5am every morning) I actually got a chance to play at a blogger table last night.

I was playing at an Intertops Freeroll around 10:00 and I thought about the blogger table. I knew SirFWALman always played at these things and always with his actual name, so I searched for him. Sure enough, he was at a table full of bloggers. When otis took off it opened up a spot for me.

How was the table? BRUTAL with a capital BRUTAL. 98% of hands were raised pre-flop. Even more flops were bet. A huge number of bluffs, and an even larger number of suck-outs. AA was garbage (except when I raise into it with my 72.)

My ONE goal for the night was to win a hand with 72. I bet I raised with it 6 times, and finally won a hand with it when I raised to $3 pre-flop and bet $10 on the flop. This hardly makes up for the time I spiked a 7 high flop and called the $10 bet against AA. Ugly. Fortunately I won the buff against the same guy, so it was a big like rubbing it in his face. For my own money.

Two hands were particularly brutal. On one I made my flush on the turn with K6 of spades but only called a $6 river raise to see Ace-Ten of spades. I was very suprised to see someone play Ace-Ten of spades without a pre-flop raise at this table. Way to NOT protect a good hand. I guess it was the flush or nothing for that guy.

The other was my final hand for the night. My Ace-Five of spades was all in when I got my flush on the turn. There was a pair of Tens on the board so my nut-flush wasn't a sure thing. Especially when moron calls me with a pair of sevens and spikes a seven on the river. Nice call shit-bag.

I do not reccomend the blogger table, unless you just want to show off and have fun. The blogger tourneys are a better idea. I'm not sure why they don't play a weekly league or something, if all of them show up so regularly every night. There was Iggy, Pauly, Otis, Poker Prof, Maudie, the aforementioned SirF, and a bunch of others I can't remember. All funny guys, but playing at these small stakes makes them pretty crazy.

I trust everyone had a safe and pleaseant Xmas. I only call it Xmas because it pisses off the "super-christian" folk I work with. Otherwise I would just say "holiday." Go be rude, eh?

I have only been able to play a few hands so far at my in-laws, playing on dial up is like torture. Slow torture. I actually tried to download a file and play at the same time. BIG mistake. The one-meg file took forever, and poker was almost completely halted. I bet my table-mates loved that it took 20 seconds for every fold or call.

Yes I showed. Madbax01 had done that STUPID .50 raise pre-flop for all of the 6 hands he had played so far. I pledged to raise him on the next hand, which happened to be my big blind. I did it anyway, even though I only got 23o. Predictably, he called my raise and folded on the flop. I should rise his BB .50 every time now, but I'm not that rude.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

I haven't posted for a while again, because I've been out of town so much. One week on the Poker Cruise, a long weekend in Kansas City and I leave Thursday for Jacksonville Fla. for the rest of the year. I will be able to post from there, but I probably won't be playing any poker so I don't know what I will write about. I heard they have poker at the racetrack (greyhound) so I might check that out sometime and blog about it.

The weekend in Kansas City was fun. Not profitable but still a blast. I won at nearly every game I played in the casino EXCEPT for poker, the game I usually win at to finance all my other games. I won money at Craps, Let it Ride, Video Poker, Roulette, something new called "Texas Shootout" and Pai Gow Poker. I think I dropped $5 into a quarter slot machine while King Lucky was in the restroom. I didn't win at that, and what's worse it took me so long to get my money in there that just as I pressed the button for the first spin, KL was already finished in the restroom.

The new personal record was hours spent gambling. I left OKC at noon on Saturday, arrived at King Lucky's house at 5:00 and we started playing poker around 6:00 PM. We played until midnight, and I got my ass kicked. I think Omaha did the most damage, but I did win a pretty big pot in Screw Your Neighbor and made a late comeback to preserve my dignity. Straight from that game to the Casino, and straight to the poker room. I sat at a completely silly table where guys were raising blind hands and hitting unreal hands. Like raising blind on every street and flipping your cards to find a straight flush. That kind of silly. After that moron hit that, he raised almost every time the action came to him, no matter what he had. He acted right after me, so it was very frustrating. After the fourth time he limp-reraised, I said "Fuck it" and stood up and left. I took a little bit of pleasure in leaving on my big blind, so it screwed up the blinds something fierce. I moved to the table that King Lucky was playing at, and I immediately busted out for the rest of my buy in. I re-bought and immediately won my first buy-in back. Even got quad nines. Checking after flopping three 9s was absolutely the right play. We left the poker room and I felt tremendously lucky to be even.

From there I caught up with KL and we went to Craps and all the other games. I took a pretty healthy profit back to the poker room, where I gave it all back and then some. I gave up after raising with AK and hitting a king, but getting beat by two pair 5s and 7s, by a guy that acted AFTER me. If a raise can't get 57 out at this table, then it is pointless to raise unless you are holding the nuts. KL and I ate a nice comped breakfast around 9:00 AM and we went back to the casino tables. We played a good long time at Crapless Craps and video poker. Eventually we went to the Steakhouse for a good comped dinner of Prime Rib. After a bit more action we left and got back to KLs house around 11:00 PM. I crashed and headed back to OKC the next morning after doing some shopping in an Outlet Mall in Olathe Kansas for Xmas presents.

Twenty-Eight straight hours of gambling is a new best for me. I haven't even played that long in a row when I went to Vegas. I came out -$150 but had a fun time.

Check out the new animated PokerSourceOnline link to the right. It now includes an automatic referral for me. If you click on it and I get some referral cash out of your account, let me know in the comments or via email (dugglebogey@casinomail.com) and I'll send half the referral bonus to you via PayPal.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Poker Tables are kind of funny about names. You never really learn the names of the people you play with live in a casino. They always end up in blogs with descriptions instead, like "Creepy guy with bad hair," or "Mr. Raises Every Pot Pre-Flop."

On the poker cruise, however, we were required to wear nametags. Seems kind of juvenile, but apparently CardPlayer (the company sponsoring the cruise) didn't want to let non-members into the card rooms. There were 1300 people on the cruise, but only 400 were part of the CardPlayer group. Since there were usually lists for every game, they didn't want non-members keeping members from playing. So they issued nametags, and requested people wear them whenever in the poker room. It was kind of nice. I liked being able to refer to someone by their name, and I liked people knowing my name. Since my real name is fairly unique, everyone quickly knew me, or at least heard about me. That might have something to do with how I played, but maybe it was just the name. The tags also said where you were from, which was also nice.

Some people just flatly refused. Maybe they figured they were "too good" to wear a nametag. I guess only people who listen for the fry machine to beep wear nametags. But that was also helpful, because anyone who refused to wear a nametag ended up being a jerk. It was nice to have the advance notice.

One such lady was absolutely unbearable to play with. I was sitting at a table and the floor seated her just across from me. After about four hands the table began to break, and she called the floor over and completely berated him about always putting her in games that are about to break up. I had to laugh and tell a fellow player that had previously taken her to task for abusing a dealer. He laughed and said "Some people can't see the forest because of all the trees." This lady was a witch with a capital "B."

But for the most part the people playing poker there were great. The aforementioned fellow, named "Kirby" was a barrel of laughs. We sat together at $4/$8 tables consistently until he gave up hold 'em for Omaha. I think it was after I cracked his aces with 89s. I flopped the open ended straight-flush draw, and caught an offsuit 10 on the river to take down a considerable pot. I also met another player from Oklahoma. He was glad to see me because a previous player from L.A. had told him that nobody was on the cruise from Oklahoma because nobody LIVED in Oklahoma. He dragged me over to her table to prove her wrong.

There were plenty of fish on board, most of them older people who were just learning to play. At the lower limits you kind of feel bad taking so much money from them, like you are fleecing grandma for her dead husband's insurance money or something. But when they catch an incredible two-outer on the river, all that guilt goes away. One little old lady went all in against me but forgot she had a chip protecting her cards. "What about that $1 chip there on your cards," I asked, and she tossed it in the pot. After I won the hand, she said "He even had to go after my last dollar!"

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

"I know I can't play this way in bigger games, but I have no interest in playing in bigger games."

I just don't get this. Why would you never want to play in bigger games? Why would you be content to only being able to beat bad players?

I guess the poker explosion has spoiled a lot of people. There is a seemingly endless supply of horrid players out there to fleece. I guess if you always look for the right table and the right situation you can always find one where the play is bad enough that you can win playing the same tight game raising only with Aces or Kings every time. They need to be pretty bad, because they need to be completely oblivious that you are only playing nut hands.

But even then it's no excuse. If you are getting 10 to 1 pot odds on a hand but you still lay it down because your cards don't fit into your predetermined set of "acceptable starting hands" you are costing yourself money. And why would you be resistant to a play that is proven by SIMPLE MATH is the right thing to do? To preserve table image? You have already put yourself into a situation where table image MUST be meaningless because you only play nut hands. To get any action at all, people need to be pretty ignorant of your image.

I don't get it. But what really bugs me is when they comment on other people's play and assume they are a fish because they won a hand with less than a top ten starting hand? "How could he have stayed with Jack-Three? Please tell me his name so I can add him to my buddy list." It never even occurs to them that playing Jack-Three might have been a perfectly acceptable play. And after flopping quad threes, all that's left is the complaining.

When we were playing on the cruise, Krager and I overheard from some random table yeller that "Half of poker is complaining," or some such comment. I wish I could remember the actual quote, because both of us thought the same thing at the same time, that has to go on the list of funny comments heard at the poker table.

Please people. Don't be satisfied by the fact that you make money playing poker. Always be trying to get better. Always be working towards playing in BETTER games and beating BETTER opponents.

Anyway, I added some folks to my blogroll at the right.

SirFWGALMan is the most prolific blogger in the universe. He rambles on and on, even when he's taking a poker hiatus. But it's usually pretty fun and funny stuff.

Felicia is a must read for anyone. If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance you've read her blog. She's taken comments off her blog because she has been getting rude comments. She needs to know that the HUGE majority of people that read her love her and her commentary. She's highly critical of the poker industry, and that's a GOOD THING. Too many people just go along and take abuse from every direction. Felicia stands up for poker players. If I were to start a Poker Association that represented players, I'd make Felicia the leader WITHOUT HESITATION, except that I think the job might kill her. Felicia, you are one of the good guys. (A certain STRIPPER can shove her twentysomething know-it-all attitude up her ass.)

Life's A Grind was on the PSO Cruise. He's a good ring player and a great tourney player. Also a really great guy who knows how to have fun at a poker table.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Posted by a very prolific member of Poker Source Online's forums (he's almost caught me in posts!)

I play both limit and no limit and have found both to be very profitable. I'm just picky about the cards I play. Doesn't matter if it's no limit, or limit, I don't see that many flops usually. I've sat at limit tables for over an hour without calling the blinds a single time. I just don't play the dink cards, any two suited, connectors, or any of that kind of thing. I need two paint (suited or not), a/? suited, or a pocket pair to see a flop. Aces are where I'm currently tweaking. Ace/Facecard is an easy call. Ace/8-Ace/9 I'll call the blinds most of the time Ace/5 or less is a toss hand for me most of the time. A/6-A/7 is what I'm tweaking right now. So yes, I'm very picky about the cards I play, but I have the time to be picky. It works for me and I have no complaints . Of course, like anyone else, I might play something like 10/9 suited if I just get bored or want to change it up a bit, but it doesn't happen often.

My response:

Again, I am not trying to insult you.

But I LOVE playing against people like you at limit poker. Tight players that only play certain hands are the easiest to beat, and you can ask Lifesagrind or Krager, I EAT YOUR TYPE OF PLAYER FOR LUNCH at limit poker. They have experienced it first hand.

For the simple reason that I always know what you have. If I always know what you have, I always know what it takes to beat you. Sure you are going to catch a set once in a while with your pocket pair and beat me, but most of the time I can lay down a hand VERY CHEAPLY and get out of your way.

But since you are playing so few hands, you have to play them very aggressively in order to make your play worthwhile over time. I can either catch good cards to beat you, or get out of your way. But I will steal your blind every time it comes to you. You will never get to play your small blind EVER, unless it is a monster.

The best hands you make with Aces or Kings is usually top pair or a big two pair. But if you get a lot of callers, you are going to get rivered by straights and flushes constantly. And if you are in late position with your aces and kings, you are going to get lots of calls from the limpers in front of you that only have to call one more bet with their suited cards, and their unsuited connectors. And those hands, in multiples, are GREAT HANDS against TPTK or some such hand. If you are only playing Ace and a face or better, it is very easy to tell when you've hit or not. You might as well be playing your hands face up.

Your strategy of playing only the highest quality hands works great in No Limit or Pot Limit poker where you can protect your hand with a decent sized pre-flop raise. But you can't get the speculation hands to fold with a one-small-bet raise. It's just never going to happen.

If what you say is true, that you make good money playing limit this way (and I don't doubt that you do) then it is only because you routinely play profitable tables against poor opponents who call way too long with no hand and no draw. But you will NEVER be able to move up into mid or high limit poker with your style of play. The LAGs will eat you alive.

I know it sounds like I am putting you down, but I'm not. In fact, I bet you're not the rock you say you are, because I want people to THINK I'm a rock when I play, when in fact I play more like a fox. But the rock image can be valuable, if you need people to lay down hands. Conversely sometimes I show REALLY BAD cards early if I think I am going to want action. Sometimes I even raise with 7-2. Once you have shown your 7-2 after raising it and betting it the whole time, guess what? You are going to get TONS of action on your big hands. Again, ask Lifesagrind and Krager. They have seen this strategy at work.

The best part is that you are the easiest guy to spot at the table. You are the guy who folds his big blind when there are 4 players that called a raise in front of you. Or you fold your small blind when 8 players limped in front of you.

If you think everyone that calls with J3 in limit poker is an idiot, then you SIMPLY DON'T know what you are talking about. There are OFTEN times in limit poker where calling with J3 is ABSOLUTELY the right play to make.

In fact, I won a HUGE pot with J6 last week, and a guy BLEW UP at me for beating his aces with it. All I had to do was call one small bet ($4) pre-flop to get into a $40 pot from the big blind. Guess what? The flop had a J6 in it, and I let the guy with aces bet himself silly and then raised him on the river when the board didn't pair. But the trick to the hand was knowing what the guy had, and knowing what I had to beat. This guy played a hundred hands without raising. What else could he have had?

Everyone learns to play tight. Against bad players, it may be the only way to win. I think playing tight is a necessary part of the progression to becoming a better poker player. But at some point you have to progress past the point of playing tight aggressive poker. One thing about being GOOD tight player is knowing when someone is playing a good loose aggressive game, or if he is just a wild maniac playing everything and catching cards like crazy. Because if you do it right, it's not so easy to tell.

Monday, December 13, 2004

I need to start writing about the cruise, but you can expect a few posts on the topic. I'll write what I think of, but I can assure you I will think of other things later. I will keep posting them, because so many really hilarious things happened, I'm sure I will not be able to get them all in one post.

The Cruise was really a blast. I'm not sure that much poker in one week is healthy, but when is an opportunity like that going to happen again? We arrived in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and got right on the ship. Mike had warned me that the line for getting on board can be long and boring, but we walked right on. After checking out our room, we met all the PSO folks at a party hosted by CardPlayer Magazine, the folks that sponsor the cruise. On a ship of nearly 1300 people, about 400 were there as part of CardPlayer Cruises' package. I got to meet Mike, Peter, Steve, Travis, John, Tom and Travis. We had a few free drinks and found out that the poker room opened at 7:00 that night.

I started out playing $4/$8 Limit. They spread a lot of different levels, but the only games in town were Hold Em and Omaha. The lowest level that wasn't a beginner game was $2/$4, and the highest I saw was $10/$20. There was an NL $200 buy-in game that I only tried once.

I quickly learned that this was going to be a profitable cruise for me. The play at the $4/$8 game was very tight so there were pots to be had if you had the guts to make a move on them. I played until around midnight on Saturday and wound up ahead almost $200.

Again on Sunday I played $4/$8 most of the day and broke even, until an amazing rush late that night put me ahead more than $100.

But Monday, I made a mistake, and the cruise would never be the same for me after that. I sat down at a table and received my cards. I put out $4 to play, and heard the dealer say "Raise." Uh-oh. I had accidentally sat at a $2/$4 table, thinking it was a $4/$8. I tried the $2/$4 table the day before but quickly gave it up when I got called down to the river by UNIMAGINABLE hands. There was just no way to make a good hand stand up when people were drawing to and hitting any possible outs, no matter how slim. That time I returned to my $4/$8 game where I was comfortable. This time I looked around for an easy escape route from $2/$4 hell. But I saw Tom (Lifesagrind) was at this table, and he was getting pretty chatty with some folks at his end of the table. So I stuck around for a while and things really started to happen. I was really having fun. Tom raised a hand, and I said to the table "I have the hand to crack those aces." I didn't crack them, but sure enough, Tom had aces. Then I got Ace King and the flop had an Ace and a Queen. An absolute ROCK had raised pre-flop so I put him on queens and played cautiously. I announced to the table that I was only calling the flop because I was up against a set of queens. When another queen hit the table on the turn I folded my Aces and Queens with top kicker and said "I can't beat four queens." Another poor soul held on with his Aces, showing aces full of queens to get bad beat by FOUR QUEENS and the table looked my way in amazement.

I soon realized that I knew exactly what everyone at this table was holding at all times. I knew when I was beat, and I knew when I had the best hand. Tom adjusted pretty well, because I was basically telling everyone what they were holding before they showed it, but the rest of the table continued their rocky behavior. I decided that if I was really going to make a difference in this game, I was going to have to get a little crazy. And I went VERY crazy, BLOGGER style. That's right, 7-2 meant raise, EVERY TIME. The HAMMER plays folks, and the hammer WINS.

The first time I raised with 7-2, I got called all the way to the river by AA. And she almost folded it too. I proudly showed my 72 and the whole table laughed. The winner was Jennifer, a Prosecutor from San Diego.

The second time I raised the 7-2, the flop was 7-7-2 and the whole table exploded. "Wow, I bet you wished you had 7-2 this time!!" they all cackled. Everyone folded on my river bet and I showed the 7-2 and I had them rolling on the floor.

After that the table changed completely. No raise got any respect. Nearly every player at the table raised with 7-2 at least once. One player named George didn't seem to be having a good time, but it was difficult to tell. Sometimes he seemed downright grumpy, and I couldn't tell if he was enjoying himself or not. On the second to the last hand of the night, he raised pre-flop with his 7-2 and I knew, he was having a ball.

At one point I had won a pretty big pot and was busy stacking my chips. I pulled one to give to the dealer when I realized there was a dealer change between the hands, and a brand new dealer named Keith had just sat down. I tipped him anyway and announced to the table "This is the trick to getting good hands, toke the dealer before he even does anything." He had a quizzical look on his face until I said that, to which he agreed completely. He dealt me a monster 9-3 offsuit. I considered folding it but told myself "You gotta have faith," and opened for $2. The flop? 8-3-3. Keith smiled when I raked the pot, and Tom sent a toke his way for the next hand. Which Tom won.

That was probably the most fun night of poker I have ever had. I bought in for $50 and rebought for $100, and ended the night with exactly $150. I was dead even, but I felt way ahead because my sides hurt from laughing that much. Maybe it was because I had been playing poker for about 15 hours that day and it was 5:00 AM Central Time when they kicked us all out of the poker room.

My routine became playing $4/$8 early in the day or evening to get ahead, and playing $2/$4 with the same riotous crowd until they forced us to leave every night. The main cast was always the same: Tom, Travis, Ray (An ex NFL football player), Jennifer the Prosecutor, and Me, along with a few innocent bystanders who had no idea what they had gotten into. We laughed and carried on like we were drunk, but I don't think any of us were actually drinking. At least we weren't until we went up to the Crow's Nest bar with all the dealers after the Card Room closed. Those folks are off-the-hook.

Friday, December 03, 2004

First I want to pimp another blog, from my buddy Lifesagrind at http://lifesagrind.blogspot.com/ . I will be meeting him on the PSO cruise tomorrow afternoon. Check his blog if you want to find out whether he is as excited as I am.

Last night I was packing clothes and generally getting ready to go, since I knew I would be busy tonight playing in the final night of the PSO poker league. (Currently in 10th place.) I heard chips flying around. At first I thought Mrs. Bogey was in there playing poker, which would be odd since she has never played online poker and I believe she is completely terrified of the idea. Then I remembered that I had signed up for a freeroll at Intertops.com the previous day and had left the software running earlier that day. I looked at the clock and it was 50 minutes past the hour. "Perfect," I thought to myself. "You can come in when the blinds have gotten to a decent level and really start playing." WRONGO! It had been running for An HOUR and 50 minutes. I was at a table where every player had more than 9000 chips and I had .....45. Yes, that's forty-five chips. Oh well, it's a freeroll. Doubled up UTG. Quadrupled up on the BB. Doubled up again. Quadrupled up when I caught a Flush when I called all in pre-flop with K8d.

Holy crap! I have the tournament average! Sweet, I'm almost in the money!

Well, I finished 18th when my Aces got cracked by a pair of 8s who caught a set on the river. But I made the money, since the tourney paid through 30 places. I bet I made more money per hour than the winner did.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

I leave Saturday morning for the Poker Cruise I won from Poker Source Online . I got the details in the mail yesterday, and it looks like a pretty sweet deal. My flight arrives in San Diego at 1:00pm and Mrs Bogey and I will take a cab to the dock. The ship cruises at 5:00pm and the card room opens Sunday morning.

There will be three tournaments, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. The first is a limit tournament with $150 buy-in. I may buy into this one, as I have had particular success playing limit tourneys lately. The only trick I know is extreme patience, and I plan on having a very relaxing trip, so patience should be aplenty. The next one is No Limit, and Poker Source Online is paying the entry fee for this one, another $150. If I cash in either one of these two, I will buy into the $230 main event, another NL tourney.

Otherwise the card rooms are open from 9:00am to 3:00am whenever we are not in port. There are three ports of call, and I will spend that time with Mrs. Bogey. I have warned her there will be lots of poker on this trip, and she is prepared for a week of relaxing and saloning.

I will be bringing a $2000 bankroll, so we will see how I do at the tables. They claim they will spread whatever games are requested, and there should be a couple of hundred card players on board, if you believe their advertising. I expect plenty of low limit and no limit tables. There is also a poker seminar scheduled, I expect I will attend that. Anyone who reads the forums at PSO knows I love to talk about poker theory.

The ship returns on Saturday morning. I expect to be exhausted and rich. Then only ten more days of work and I am off to Jacksonville for Christmas with Mrs. Bogey's family.

There is an internet cafe on the ship, so depending on availability and pricing, look for some posts from the ship!

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Monday, November 29, 2004

Not much poker over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Relatives visiting and Thanksgiving hassles, along with some holiday shopping made it unlikely. I did squeeze in two freerolls at the same time, along with one SNG before bed Sunday night.

The freerolls were at Intertops, and I moneyed in both of them. Intertops mysteriously doubled the prize pool in one, so I made twice as much for my 5th place finish as the payout schedule indicated. My 20ish finish in the other netted me a big $.75 score. Still, it’s an infinite amount more than my buy in.

The other game was a SNG at Pacific. They are amazingly easy. I got a nice early lead with I held AJ in a J high flop. I called an all-in in front of me and turned a J and rivered a J. Pacific doesn't show you the loser's cards, even in an all-in, so I don't know if I sucked the guy out. I imagine I did, hopefully Kings or Aces. I got a big lead early, blew it, got the lead back, blew it again, then got a HUGE lead. Quads showed up 5 times in one SNG, once on the board to counterfeit a guy’s pair of jacks who was all in on a flop of 444. A moron called him with king crap offsuit. He did end up finishing second to me for the tourney so at least he got paid and the moron went out on the bubble. I think he just got tired of playing because we battled for so long. The other 8 players were pathetic. If you aren't playing tourneys at Pacific, you should be. And if you do, remember the referral code DuggleBogey for $90 worth of comps from PokerSourceOnline.com with a $100 deposit.

The only other "pokery" thing I did this weekend was watch movies. I got the special edition of "Rounders" on Friday with a Best Buy gift card (Thank you PSO) and watched it with the "poker pro" commentary running. Phil Hellmuth did most of the talking, of course. Johnny Chan and Chris Moneymaker were also pretty interesting. Chris "Jesus" Ferguson said about 10 words, only when Phil forced him to. When there were poker hands going on in the movie, they had plenty to say, but the rest of the film had them stunned into silence.
The other movie I watched, based on a recommendation from a PSO forum poster, was "Shade." What a piece of crap this movie is. Never mind that they completely misunderstood the concept of "table stakes" the central theme of the movie is "the best cheater should win." No legitimate card player would find this movie at all entertaining. Maybe a slight-of-hand magician might. And if you bought Sylvester Stallone as the ultimate card shark, you're a fool.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

For the record, Poker Stars has the worst freerolls in the business. They're even worse than Party, and Party doesn't HAVE freerolls. I played in my first Poker Stars last night because King Lucky called me and we wanted to screw around. I asked him if PS had freerolls and he said "We missed it, they start at 5:00." I said "It's only 4:55." I think he was the 6000th entry. So He and I, along with 5998 of poker's finest set sail on a journey to win one of NINE seats into a tourney with the grand prize of $100. WooHoo!!

A small note about the quality of play in these. I am dealt AQo on the button, and I raise maybe 4x the BB. Two come along for the fun. Flop is AJT rainbow. Woohoo, top pair. I make a decent sized bet, both call. Turn is an offsuit Q, giving me 2 pair but a K kicks my tail. It's checked to me and I check also, hoping for an A or a Q and fearing a check raise. The river is an offsuit K. The board has the NUT. It checks to me, which is odd, so I go all in. I figure one of these morons will fold so I will at least get something out of this pot. THEY BOTH FOLD.

All those folks that told you the players at Poker Stars are the best on the internet were yankin' ya.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

A lot of people were concerned about my playing Craps for my casino whoring at Reef Club Casino. Apparently there is a line in their policy that says that low risk Craps and Roulette bets will not be counted towards your bonus.

I took that to mean that if you bet both the pass line and the don't pass line you will not get credited with a bet towards your bonus. Same goes for betting black and red at the same time at Roulette. These are both terrible bets that you can't win but can lose. I guess they want to discourage this for bonus purposes. Otherwise I'm sure they want to encourage it.

One player even sent an email about his bonus requirements and the said he was $21 short because of a few Craps bets he made. This concerned me greatly. So I asked the live chat if Craps counted towards my bonus as long as I bet it straight, and the support person said yes. I was prepared for a fight when I did my cashout, but lo and behold, the money was deposited into my Neteller account yesterday, no questions asked.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

This is a quote I actually said about myself on the forum at PokerSourceOnline. It's a bit misleading, since I'm the only person I actually know who plays limit tournaments. All my friends play NL exclusively, except maybe KingLucky who plays stud and omaha tournaments too. But he hates limit. That's what everyone says. "I hate limit tournaments."

I posted before about how usually a person hates a game because they are not very good at it. There's more to hating limit than not being good at it. You can be good at limit and hate it too. Because it's less exciting than NL, or because it requires patience. A LOT of poker players are action junkies. I wouldn't say that all bad poker players are action junkies, but I would say that all action junkies are bad poker players. Patience is not the first virtue you are likely to find in a roomfull of poker lovers.

Limit poker is all about patience. It's tough to put you off your tough hands with raises, so if you have the patience to let the good hands come, you can make it very far into a limit tourney. Sure you need luck to win, just like every poker tournament, but you can wait longer for the luck to arrive in limit. It also helps when your opponents play poorly.

I got to the final table out of 236 players in dead last place, just over T12,000 in chips. The blinds were 1500/3000, and I was next on the BB. When you are short stacked in a limit tourney, you usually have to make a pre-flop commitment to play a hand all the way no matter what flops. I got 99 and made that commitment. I raised to 6000 when 6 or 7 limped, and they all called. I prayed for a 9, but instead got a flop of 667, two clubs. I checked, hoping to get a lot of players to come in. A couple did, when the chip leader raised to 6000. I re-raised what I had left, and everyone folded. He was on a draw with JTc.

This is a huge mistake on his part. He basically isolated the all-in player when he was on a draw. No club came and no Jack or Ten came, so he lost a pretty huge pot to me. He could afford the chips so that wasn't the problem. The problem is an ace came on the river and I'm sure one of the other players had one. He had a chance to knock out a player and improve everyone's take, and he decided to bluff them out of the hand. And you never know who you are letting back into the game when you do this. He let (modesty aside) the best player in the tournament back into the game. His punishment for this error? From an overwhelming chip lead, I knocked him out 4th.

With over 40K I soon took over the table and got to heads up, quickly increasing my lead to 210,000 chips against 20,000. I am a heads up DEMON lately. It helps that I have been a rock for the last hour and hopefully that image lingers in the mind of the opponent as I raise, raise, raise. Judiciously showing a pair of Kings here and a pair of aces there, I want him to think I am still a rock on an incredible card rush. I'm not showing the 42s he folded to when I raised pre-flop. When I finally won a huge pot when I made two pair on the river with my 23o, and rivered a straight with 57 after flopping OESD, it's too late for him to recover. I had the 10 to 1 lead at the fourth break, and it was over three hands later when the board showed four diamonds, and my Kd trumped his 9d.

The tournament took a total of four hours and eighteen minutes. You are going to get a lot of good hands in 4:18. If you have the patience to wait for them, you can do some serious damage.

Monday, November 22, 2004

I was going to post about the home game from this weekend, but nothing positive would come of that. I wouldn't be able to resist talking about the argument I had with another player who claimed that the dealer didn't have to be on the button. He apparently got upset at the last home game when the big blind skipped someone that wasn't him. I won a save and felt lucky to get anything.

These games are supposed to be fun and therefore I honestly don't expect to win them. If I were to play my real game there, nobody would ever play again. I soft played everyone at the table on almost every hand. Of course it came back to bite me in the ass, but I expected that. What I don't expect is for someone to have his head up his ass about the rules, and want to get into a brawl over it.

We had a lot of people cancel at the last minute and still had ten people playing so he may never get invited back. If there ever is a game again. I'm not sure I'd miss it that much. I'll play in any game they have, I'm already committed to that. But if nobody had another game, I'd probably be happier. One person suggested we find six regulars and have a dealers choice game once a month. I could live with that, if we got the right six people. And the pickings are quite slim. Maybe Maudie has a game I could get into that isn't full of people desperate to NOT have a good time.

On top of that I read too many blogs today. So many judgemental assholes out there, so little writing talent. Idiots in their early twenties that think they not only know everything there is to know about poker, but also about life. Trust me, they don't know shit, including proper spelling and grammar.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Thursday, November 18, 2004

We will take time out from the regularly scheduled Poker Bonus whoring for some Casino Bonus whoring. I have done the casino whore bit at PlanetLuck and Starluck casinos. They are both owned by Party Poker and there was an unbelievable promotion through Poker Source Online . The actual bonus wasn't as good with these deals, but the deal was better so I gave it a shot.

The PlanetLuck/Starluck deal was that you deposited $100, got $100 in bonus cash and got a $50 Amazon Gift card, as long as you wagered $1600. You had to play blackjack. I made about $150 on those deals combined, plus $100 in Amazon gift cards.

This one was at Reef Club Casino . What made this deal better was the fact that they had Craps. Anyone that knows a little about craps knows that if there is an amount wagered bonus element, then the thing to do is shoot craps, and to play "wrong." I like to play "wrong" in the casinos, but sometimes the shooter gets mad at you, because basically you are betting that the shooter, if he is betting on himself, and he usually does, will lose. I usually respond to a shooter who gets mad with a good ol' "Fuck you. If you don't like it, don't play."

A little background for the non-craps players out there. Craps seems intimidating because of all the different kinds of bets and all the yelling and screaming and jargon and whatnot. It's a very simple game. A player bets and rolls the dice. If he makes a 2,7,11 or 12 you either win or lose the bet. If a 4,5,6,8,9 or 10 are rolled, he continues to roll until he rolls that number again, or rolls a 7. That's the whole game. Will the shooter roll the same number twice without rolling a 7. You either bet that he will or he won't.

It gets more complicated when you talk about the bets, and that's because of odds. The real reason craps is so popular is because after the point is established (one of those numbers that isn't a 2,3,7,11 or 12) you get "true odds" on your bet. That means you will win the same amound depending on the chance of that number rolling. Say the point is 4. There are three different ways two six-sided dice can roll a 4, but there are six different ways to roll a 7. So you get double your money if you are betting on the 4.

The converse is true if you are betting AGAINST the 4. You have to bet $10 to win $5, but there is twice as much a chance you will win it. There is no house edge on these bets.

At THAT's the most important factor in this casino whoring story. If you can wager twice as much and have twice as much chance of winning, and THE AMOUNT WAGERED is the most important factor in the bonus, you can essentially bet HALF as much as necessary.

I played craps for about 20 minutes, betting "wrong" the whole time and had $1000 wagered with ease. I even profited $64 while doing it, so I actually cashed out $264. I don't know about you, but $164 profit for very little risk in 20 minutes is a GREAT deal for me.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

When I got home from Kansas City, I logged on to check my email and to check on the reaction to the flaming post I left on the PSO forum. One thread had the title "We are giving away a cruise trip in the next 24 hours." Interested? I sure was!

It turns out that one person who won the cruise tournament suddenly cannot go. They hadn't issued the tickets or bought the plane tickets yet so they decided to just give the cruise package away to someone who was SURE they could go. They said they wanted to give it away to someone who participated in the forums a lot, someone who won the 10,000 PSO point prize in the last few months would be given the most consideration. I won it two months ago, so I fit pretty good in this category.

The second category was a person who had participated in the most Promotions. When Absolute confirms my raked hands on their next report, I will have done THEM ALL. Nobody could surpass me in this category.

The third category was a tie breaker, based on the number of posts in the forum. I have the most posts in the forum of any customer, by almost a third. Nobody else is even close on this one. It's nice to know being opinionated and having a big mouth, along with some slow time at work can pay off.

So when I entered, they basically called off the contest and gave the package to me. I really tried hard to win the cruise in the tournaments, even to the point of getting RZ to play in the last one Saturday night because I couldn't make it. He finished 180th out of 399, so I figured my chances were gone. Never give up!

When I started playing poker online last year, I just thought it would be a good cheap way to kill some time and have a lot of competition and fun. When I started winning and learning and getting more involved with the community, it started looking more like a full fledged hobby. But when I got associated with Poker Source Online this really started to take on a life of its own. I started talking about poker a lot more, thinking about poker a lot more, and enjoying the community of poker players a lot more. I have gotten a lot of my friends into poker, and all of them have taken advantage of Poker Source Online in one way or another. Free chips, free tournaments, free poker tables, everyone is profiting, and having fun. But this takes the cake. I am getting a FREE CRUISE TO CABO SAN LUCAS, all expenses paid, just for participating in their site, and playing poker. I would have played poker anyway, and I participate in their site for myself, to keep myself entertained and to talk about poker with people. I would have done it for nothing. This is all too much.

Thank you Poker Source Online Again I say. If anyone is playing poker online with any frequency, and they are not part of an affilliate program, they are stupid. If it's one different than Poker Source Online they are just playin CRAZY.

This weekend was absolutely insane, in every possible way. Well, in every possible GOOD way. Almost.

Things started poorly on Friday night when I was the FIRST person eliminated from the poker league. I had done so well the week before that people were gunning for me. Third or fourth hand in I got AT on the big blind, and Actyper (another PSO regular) raised from 20 to 100. I called and hit an ace on the flop. I checked, he bet 100 and I raised to 400. He would later say that that raise was WAY too high and he thought I was trying to buy it. The pot was already 310, so I don't think it was that outrageous, I was just trying to send a clear signal that said "I HAVE AN ACE." He called and the turn was a 10, giving me two pair. There was also a queen on the flop, so I thought momentarily about KJ but dismissed it. This time I led out with another 400, and he still thought I was putting a move on him. I have only posted about a zillion times on the forum that I play TIGHTER that TIGHT early in multi-table tournaments, but he ignored this and called again. The river was a disaster. A queen counterfeited my pair of 10's and now I was beaten by Aces, Tens or any Queen, along with KJ. He had me outchipped and went all in for my last 600, and like a stupid fish, I called. I was so upset that he was stupid enough to call my first two bets, it put me on tilt. Maybe I was pot committed with 800 in the pot already, but I came back from 600 last week, there's no reason to think I couldn't do it again. Instead I took that opportunity away and called to see his KQ. Yes, he called with a pair of queen and a king kicker to a big raise after the flop with an ace on the board. Yes, he called a big bet on the turn with only a pair of queens and a gutshot straight with an Ace and a Ten on the board when the straight could already be made. He made two fish moves, and I made one.

The good news is he took this MONSTER chip lead and finished 21st out of 45 people. Good show. Don't worry Actyper, you're not a fish. I flamed him pretty hard on the forum, but I was really just kidding. He had a pretty good comeback with "You like Hellmouth so much you're starting to act like him." Touche. (No idea how to do the accent over the "e")

I played a STT on Pacific to console myself. I only had a few bucks in there because I cashed out my original deposit so it was just a 10+1. It was an incredibly dominating performance. I had 4500 of the 8000 total with 6 players left. I had 7200 with three left, and knocked the third place player out with 72 (The HAMMER!) I dominated the heads up game and basically got the guy to fold until he was all in on the blind. I bet those guys hated me. I was pushy, greedy and all kinds of mean. It felt GREAT!

On Saturday I drove up to Kansas City for KingLucky's home game. I started out very poorly. I even had to reload after about an hour. But then someone called a round of Omaha and everything turned around. I made a bunch of my draws, usually with a dozen outs or more, and even when I didn't I won anyway. That got me healthy, and things just got better and better. By the end I think I had doubled or tripled my buy in. It's a very small stakes game, but it's still nice to win once in a while. I had gotten abused the last two times out, but I made up for it both times by hitting big at the casino. I joked that I would probably lose at the casino this time because I won at the home game.

But that turned out to be false. My first hand at Ameristar Casino was 88, which I like to call "The Crazy Eighty-Eight." (Any Kill Bill fans out there?) I caught an 8 on the flop and got the boat on the turn. I never touched my buy in money again. I was up $250 on my first session of Hold 'Em, and took a break and played some Let It Ride with King Lucky. I lost $20 playing LIR, but won that back at the craps table. It was a real struggle, and considering how much I got down originally, a $20 profit was a real accomplishment.

I returned to the Hold 'Em game and won another $150 in pretty short order. There was plenty of Laundry to be done...at one point I asked the dealer if they sold ski gloves in the gift shop for the cards he was dealing. But I won a few monster hands that made the whole game worthwhile. I only bought back in for $80, it's what I had in loose bills and I figured I could reload if I needed to. I did get all in twice, but won both of those. Once I held 77 on a kill hand. A kill is when someone wins two hands in a row at 3/6, and the game becomes a 6/12 game with a forced bet of $6 by "the killer." I just called the $6 with my 77 but got raised afterward to $12. I went all in (limp reraise!) for $16 and got called by the original raiser and another player. The flop was Q7Q. Just what you want when you have no more money to bet, a flopped boat. It got worse. The original raiser bet out and the other player folded. We flipped our cards and I apologized to the raiser when he showed AA. The turn revealed the case 7, and suddenly my heart raced. "If there's an ace on the river, you've got the bad beat!" I said. We quickly added up the pot and realized there was enough in it to qualify, and I screamed "COME ON ACE!" It was a 4, but wow, what an exciting hand. The Bad Beat Jackpot amount was over $38,000, and my share would have been nearly $10,000. The AA player would have won $19,000+ and each player at the table would have had over $1,500. The table mumbled and grumbled about it for a good half hour. Nothing like a close shave with $10K to get your heart pounding! Instead I won $48.

But I came back big with that $48 and left the table when my plays made my neighbors irate. When I check raised the guy to my left when I caught my KKKJJ boat on the river, he said "Were you ever going to bet your hand?" I replied "Why would I, you were doing just fine!." I pissed off the guy to the right of me when I held TT and called his pre-flop raise. He bet all the streets and it got down to just he and I, with the only over on the board being a King. I said "I think I'm beat but I have to call," and he showed 77. As I was stacking my chips I said "I was almost positive you had me beat that time," and he said, very unhappily "Then why didn't you fold?!?" I was thinking "There was $80 in the pot and it was just $6, what do you think I'm a fucking retard?" But all I said was "The pot made me. Too much odds." This didn't satisfy him and he started getting more and more irate. Time for me to go.

Session three ended up dead even, but the table was a ton of fun. I was really sweating being put at the same table, because the same two guys were there. Luckily they started a new table and everyone was there to have a good time. I really enjoyed it, and broke dead even. After tips even, so I was happy.

From there we went to Harrah's Casino so I could take a look a the brand new poker room over there. It was really nice. Quieter than Ameristar's room, and everything was shiny and new. The Plastic cards glided over the brand new felt like there was no friction at all. The rounded edges on the $5 chips made chip shuffling a breeze, and I was happily shuffling away as I fold fold folded my way along. I barely saw a hand worth playing, and my starting hand requirements are VERY LOW in a casino. Like fish low. Like I won a big hand with 47s earlier in the night. Scaly. Smells like tuna. Anyway, I did manage to win a big pot with Q9 that ended up being the nut straight from the turn.

We got back to KingLucky's in time to see the Simpsons, so we were out from 2AM to 7PM. I slept Sunday night and drove back to Oklahoma on Monday. That's when the really exciting part started.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Well, it finally came time to address two major problems with my blog.

Problem number one was that when I started posting the poker comics, it moved my sidebar all the way to the bottom of the screen in Internet Explorer. I didn't notice immediately because I was using Foxfire, and the problem didn't occur on Foxfire. Well, there was a different problem where the Poker Comic and the Sidebar text would overlap, but that only existed when the Poker Comic was at the top of the page. When my laptop hard drive ate itself, I never reloaded Foxfire and got to see what was happening in IE, and it was pretty darn ugly. Of course all that was missing was my counter, and who cares about that besides me. But then I decided that I needed to address problem number two, and that would make problem number one much more important.

Problem number two was that I didn't pimp any other bloggers in a links section. I knew link sections were easy to do, I just never got off my ass and did it. I am mentioned in a ton of other bloggers' blogrolls, and it is just plain RUDE of me not to reciprocate. But in order to have a blogroll on the sidebar, you'd actually need to be able to SEE my sidebar.

Problem one was solved by tinkering with the blogger template for a while. Problem two was even easier, I stole the formatting from someone else's blog. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know.

So now the blog works correctly, I think. Probably not at all screen resoultions or in all browsers, but screw all that, I'm not enough of a geek to care.

One kind of annoying thing did happen during the PSO League that got under my skin.

While the tourney was going on, many PSO members participated in the Online Chat going on at the PSO Chat site. I was enjoying the chat, as several people from my table were on there, and they are pretty funny guys.

When the last person on the final table that was also in chat got knocked out, I started talking more in chat, just because I knew it would be more fun and entertaining for them and myself. I was talking about hands a lot, not necessarily during the hand, but certainly afterwards. The other heads-up player was called Zagnut99, and there was no Zagnut in chat, so I assumed he wasn't there.

I was completely wrong. I also assumed that if he was there, he would have identified himself a long time ago. Also not true. There were a few people in there that had different names in Chat from what they were in the Poker Game, but they were careful to tell who they were. One person even put his chat name next to his poker site name with a pipe between them. It was very clear that you were supposed to identify yourself in chat. He was JD something in chat, and when the game was over with he typed into chat. "Thanks for the game, I'm Zagnut99." He had been in the chat the whole time, listening to everything I had to say about how I was playing, and just kept his mouth shut.

I don't mean to imply that he broke any rules, or that he even definitely gained an advantage. Hell, if he didn't catch his 35% flush, I doubt he would have won the tourney at all. I'm just saying, that's a SHITTY way to be. This was a VERY friendly small stakes tourney. The prizes available outside the prize money are probably worth a total of $20-$35. It's not worth being a shit about, that's for sure.

Well, I contiuned my bonus whoring activities, but this time I opened an account at Absolute Poker so that I could Participate in the Poker Source Online Poker League event that kicked off Friday night.

The structure was good. Around 43 people, which is not bad for a first time event, started at 1500 chips. I dislike the 9 max tables at absolute, but that was one of just a few things wrong with absolute.

I have heard people complain and complain about Pacific Poker software. It's a dream compared to absolute poker. The only thing that is better about Absolute is that you can run multiple tables at one time. If your system can handle it. My new computer, running at 3GHZ and 512meg of memory was struggling to run ONE table at absolute. I heard someone say you could run 7 tables at once, but I think that would choke a Cray.

Anyway, I deposited $100 there, got $35 bonus cash (play 100 hands, get $10 released at a time, I dunno how the last $5 gets released.) I played a few hands before the tourney so I could get a feel for the site. The sounds are shitty, the look and feel are shitty. Playing at absolute is like wading through waist deep shit, basically. I quickly lost $10 at a $.50/$1.00 table, that I played because I couldn't get into a $1/$2 table, and nobody was playing at $2/$4 tables. The 6 max tables seem to be popular. Not with me, however. Finally a spot opened on the $1/$2 table (35 minutes on the waiting list) and I won my money back, plus enough to pay for the league entry.

In spite of the software shortcomings, I did pretty well at the League. They will be playing 4 events in 5 weeks (Thanksgiving weekend is off) on Friday nights. I took second in Event 1, which won me 500 PSO points and put me in good position in the league standings. It seems like if you can make the final table in all 4 events, you will have a good shot at winning the whole thing, which is more PSO points. The buy in is $5+1 so I also got nearly $50 for my second place finish. That should help me clear my PSO bonus at Absolute, which requires 300 raked hands for 6000 PSO points. When I clear it I should have 27000 PSO points, and no idea what I want to spend them on. Plus whatever I win for playing in the league.

Two critical hands I played were one where I got myself way way overcommitted with only Ace high, but somehow I won the hand when the other player checked behind me on the river and couldn't beat the ace.

When we were down to 3 players I got AJs with the chip lead and the board flopped AAJ. I min bet and the second place player min raised me. I smooth called and checked the turn, which was the worst possible card for me. Another J. While it guaranteed me I couldn't lose, it made it either a sure split or easy for my opponent to lay down his hand. He made another bluff attempt and I just called again, which was probably a mistake. I should have min raised him. He might have called it, although any aggression here probably would have induced a fold. Hoping he would feel pot committed and maybe representing bluff, I went all in on the river, and he layed it down easily. He came back and beat me in the tourney when he had a slight lead and I didn't play my Pair of Jacks with an Ace kicker aggresively enough and he caught his flush on the turn. T3 of hearts beat AJ for the title.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

If anyone out there isn't working with an affiliate program, now is the time.

Poker Source Online has upgraded their promotions. Now instead of getting a free 300 piece chipset, you can get a 500 piece chipset. Really nice clay chips, about $100 in stores or ebay. Or you can take their PSO points. Instead of 6000, you get 9000, which equates to $90 in their online store. You can get Amazon or Best Buy gift certificates, or they have a good selection of poker supplies and books. You can even get American Express gift certificates, which I think work just like AmEx travellers checks.

I have convinced RZ to finally do a promotion through them. Here's the deal. He is going to deposit $100 into Pacific Poker. For referring him I get $20, which I split with him. He receives $50 in bonus cash from Pacific Poker, and then $90 in PSO points. Altogether we will be getting $160 in value, and all he has to do is play 250 raked hands of poker. He doesn't even have to contribute to the rake, any raked hand he is dealt counts. He could theoretically go play Omaha Hi/Lo and fold every hand for 250 hands (great thing about Omaha Hi/Lo, even at $.50/$1.00, nearly every hand gets raked because 7 or so see the flop) and still make money on this deal.

What's the catch? Well, Pacific doesn't have NL or PL poker ring games. Limit only. You can only play one table at a time, so it will take 5-6 hours to play the 250 raked hands. And to cash out the bonus money, you have to wager 20x the amount, so to collect the $50, you have to wager $1000. But you can cash out your deposit amount anytime you want and just play with the bonus until you have wagered enough or it is gone.

PSO has also started a rakeback program through Ultimate Bet. You get 20% of your rake back in PSO points. Not cash, but better than nothing. Gift Certificates make great Christmas Presents, and it's not even re-gifting.

If you are playing poker on a daily basis, as I am, and you are not getting "something extra" when you play, you are a SUCKER. There are comps to be had people! Get 'em!

If you sign up with Poker Source Online be sure to say you were referred by "dugglebogey" on the registration form, and I will paypal half the referral fee to you as soon as I get it.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Monday, November 01, 2004

I didn't think I was going to have much poker content this weekend as my folks were in town and I spent most of the weekend with them. As I was cooking dinner for my mother's birthday on Saturday I peeked in at a freeroll tournament that had just started at Intertops. It was beeping me and saying I only had 5 seconds left to act and I saw AA so I hit the raise button, raising the 15 blind to 30. The flop had a A so when the action checked to me I hit the bet 15 button again. About 4 callers and action checked to me on the turn so I clicked 15 again. That struck me as really odd because it should have been 30. I looked up at the window title and saw the unexpected NL in the title. This was a NO LIMIT tourney, and I thought it was limit. A player behind me went all in. I looked at the board again and saw Ace King and Jack, and knew I was in trouble. I should have tossed it in right there but I hoped he was overplaying two pair and called his raise on 4th street and his all in on the river to see his QT and I was down to T20. Funny stuff. At least I cashed in the Intertops $250 freeroll on Friday night, so I would have something to blog about.

But Intertops had it's $1500 500 Raked Hands Required tournament on Sunday night, and I somehow had enough hands to play in it. There were more than 360 entries, and I made sure to check this time, it was a LIMIT tournament. I won an insanely large number of hands early, catching straights and boats every time I saw a flop. The first 45 minutes of limit tournaments are pointless however. I worked my T1000 up to T3000 in those first 45 minutes, but after the first break the blinds and speculation hands quickly ground that down to T1700. Still, people were beginning to get knocked out and I checked the payout schedule. $9.75 for 4th place, not bad for a freeroll. I was determined to get some money out of this tourney that started at 8:00pm but felt later because of Dayling Savings changing back to Central Standard Time.

I ground and ground, holding on for the no-shows to get knocked out. There is usually around 50% no-shows at these intertops tournaments. I'd think a 500 raked hands required tourney would be different, but sure enough there were only 5 of us actually there at the first table. If you can hold on and get close to the second break, the no-shows should have been blinded out and you know how many you have to make it through to see the money. After the second break, there were about 50 left, so I figured I could walk into 40th place, an I was right. 40 came quickly, and the next level of payout was 30th, so I held on and made it with just under the big blind amount. I got UTG with less than 1200, so I went all in with J9 hoping to win at least the blinds. 3 came along with me and I made a straight to the queen and tripled up. The next hand gave me Q6 of spades on the big blind, which I got to see for free. Three spades on the flop and the small blind going all the way with me put me around 8000. A tiny big of breathing space. The next BB gave me 24 of spades. I said out loud to Ms. Bogey, "Nice big blind, the flop had better be Ace-Three-Five." Sure enough A35 hit the board and the button had A3 and we capped the whole way. This win gave me enough to squeeze my way into the final table. 10th place paid $15 and went up $15 for each person who got knocked out. I vowed to hang on as long as I could. I was 8th in chips, and figured $45 would be very respectable if I could maintain my position. I caught AQ of clubs on my button and called pre-flop. The flop had Ace-Jack-Rag and called a bet by and EP player. I checked the stacks and although she had me by a lot, I could call all the way down and still survive. The turn was a King and she bet again, I called. Turn was another Ace. Now the only hands that beat me were AJ, AK, and A-whatever that rag was, and QT. She wasn't the tightest player in the world, catching a lot of goofy straights to get to the final table. One player even complained that she was the "King of Straights," and she corrected him to "Queen of Straights." She bet the river. I raised it, and she called, which told me I was good. She flipped 10-7o and I moved into 2nd place in chips. She had bluffed the whole way, and called with nothing. She tilted out the next hand, even though she had over 20k in chips left. Maybe it was past her bedtime. She took 9th, and I was guaranteed my $45.

I handled the chips well. I was barely in 2nd and didn't hold onto it for more than a hand, but I did let the chip leader knock out most of the other players. I took one out when he overplayed his AT against my AA. Neither one of us improved, but I was marching up the payout schedule. Finally I got heads up, but my 50k in chips was up against his 320k mountain. I went into standard SUPER-AGGRESSIVE heads-up mode, and took a few pots with lucky catches. If I held two rags, he would check all the way and I would catch a match on the river. I clawed up to 90k and hit a big hand. I held J5 and the flop was J75. I checked, hoping for some action and he bet. I just called. Turn was an Ace, and I hoped to hell he had a naked ace. He did, and bet it. I rasied, he re-raised. Turn was another 5, and he bet out. I raised and he typed "You probably have me kicked, but I gotta see," and called. I typed "boat," and he said "nh."

It was the most civilized heads-up game I think I have ever played. We almost never capped, and rarely bluffed. I called once when I caught a 2 on the flop with my 42s and he bet on the river to try and steal with an unimproved 53. He said "nice call." I just took pots from him at a very steady rate, until finally I caught two pair and he got all in with a pair of 10s. I caught a lot of cards down the stretch, but he folded a bit too much even when I didn't.

$375 for around 4 hours of limit poker. With a buy-in of $0, that's an infinite profit. I'll sure take the boost to my meager bankroll.

I was reading the News Aggregator at Damning the River (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dtr/aggregator/) and I came across mentions of either my name or my blog or both at two different blogs. Playing in the blogger tournament has really helped get my name out there a little bit. I guess the guy you bounce out of an important tourney on a freak hand will always remember you, but it was nice to see JD from Cheap Thrills (http://cheapthrillsjd.blogspot.com) mention that he heard how juicy the Intertops Freerolls are from my blog. There was also an anonymous comment I left at Life's a Grind (http://lifesagrind.blogspot.com) which I confessed was me got mentioned.

So if you are writing a blog and want to get readers, I suggest reading other blogs and making comments, especially if they are decent, thought provoking comments. Also participating in any blogger events. The blogger community is fairly tight. A lot of very intelligent, very likable people. And for God's sake, one of them needs to teach me how to link with a label. Putting the URL after the name isn't style, it's ignorance!

In poker news, all the hands I played towards my rakeback program at Royal Vegas turn out to be bogus. Apparenlty RV doesn't have their shit together enough to maintain a rakeback program, so it was cancelled. I fucked it up at first when I didn't fill out a form, but after that RV's reporting just fell apart. I ended up playing there for about three months and got ZERO rakeback. Poker Source Online, generous as ever, offered to give points to anyone who thinks they got screwed in the deal, but I seriously have NO idea how many points I am due. I sincerely doubt RV gave PSO anything for all the points I should have gotten when I screwed up the form thing, even though I signed up at RV properly and the points should have been accruing the whole time. And since I don't know the exact point was when I fixed the form problem, it could be anywhere between 100 and 10,000 points. Since that falls anywhere between $1 and $100, I just told PSO to give any points that I might have gotten to someone who feels like they really got screwed. After all, I didn't play there much because I never got any feedback on the rakeback program, and I did make about $400 while playing the shit-ass players they have on that site. It's almost a shame to do it, but I withdrew all my money and have quit every Prima site now for good. They do have some crappy players dying to give away their money, but so does Pacific and Party and everyone else, apparently. Hopefully Absolute does too, and after that Ultimate Bet. Maybe someday there will be a Prima site that has a decent interface and has their shit together. So far, NONE of them do. The Gaming Club pissed me off. RV did too now, and Aztec Riches wasn't very impressive either. Maybe it's Prima in general. I think the best thing would be for me to stay away from Prima sites altogether.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

I started another bonus whore event on Monday while Mrs. Bogey was at work. I bought into Pacific Poker using PokerSourceOnline.com as a referral affiliate.

Pretty sweet deal, actually. Too good to pass up. I had originally heard that Pacific software sucked ass, and that you had to see a flop for a raked hand to count. Well, they were half right. The software does suck, but according to the membership at PSO, you don't even have to put money in the pot for a raked hand to count for you. I've been looking for someplace that evaluates raked hands like Party Poker, and Pacific is it.

I deposited $100 from Neteller and was immediately credited with $25. I would have to wager $500 to withdraw the $25, but could play with it immediately. Far superior to the Party System of releasing bonuses only after the hands are played. After my first positive session with 130 raked hands, yet another $25, this time from PSO, was deposited into my account. So I was up $50 without even winning a hand. I played my way up to 203 raked hands on Tuesday and finished the 250 hands required by PSO on Wednesday. My account rests at 265, so I won $115 in three days and got $50, plus $60 worth of bonuses from Pokersource online. That's a $225 profit in three days, totalling about 4 hours of play time.

I mostly played $1/$2 Hold Em, as nearly every hand was raked. I can only remember two hands that didn't make the rake. I also played some $.50/$1.00 Omaha Hi/Lo because I like the game and with 7-9 people seeing every flop, the rake was about as consistent as $1/$2 Hold Em. You cold go to one of these Omaha tables and fold every hand for 300 or so hands and be guaranteed to make money on this promotion. You would probably lose $30 or so in blinds, but since you get $50 in cash and $60 in GCs, you would still be ahead $80, even if you don't know the first thing about poker.

The extra $25 from PSO at Pacific Poker ends on Sunday night, so if you want to try it, hurry up. Use DuggleBogey as your referral at PokerSource and you will get half the referral cash in your Paypal Account as soon as I get it in mine. That's another $5-$10.

Monday, October 25, 2004

The hard drive of my work computer ate itself. Like a dummy, I only had a copy of the bitmap template on that computer, and not backed up anywhere. Not even emailed to anyone.
So my choices are to use a crappy jpeg and try to make it work, or draw poor ParPo and Fish again in MS Paint, which wasn't easy in the first place. Especially because I have ZERO artistic talent for drawing, and Paint doesn't help much. I even had an idea for a new one today. Now the drawing and my idea are both gone. Hmph.

Poker was lousy this weekend as well. I bought into a Pot Limit tourney at Royal Vegas, just because of the soft spot in my heart for Pot Limit. I do think it hurts the truly bad players more than no limit, when they can out-aggressive their poor play. But I think the limit hurt me more than it helped me.

Of course it was a rebuy tourney, so that added a level of frustration. 150 players with a total of 165 rebuys and add-ons. Pot limit so it takes a lot of raising and re-raising to get all in early, maybe 8 rounds. These two guys at my table do it, and I'm expecting to see Aces vs Kings, or Queens at least. What do I see? A4o vs KQs. Idiots. I "innocently" type into chat "Does anyone know of a poker game going on around here?" to a few chuckles. The loser, who's KQs didn't improve, lost to Two pair, aces and fours replies "Screw You Idiot, KQ is a good hand, he got lucky to catch that second pair." Second pair? He didn't need the FIRST pair to beat your shitty hand. His ACE HIGH beat your sorry ass. "My bad, good hand." Is my reply. He had the guy out chipped by 70 and worked his way back up to 110 before I took him out with a pair of 8s. Then came the routine taunt begging us to come play him in a private cash game so he can prove how great a player he is. Maybe I brought this on myself when I typed "Please Rebuy..Please Rebuy..Please Rebuy.." after he got knocked out. Who knows?

I don't think I ever got above the average but somehow ground my way down to 12 players left when I got AJ on the small blind with about 9K left, third smallest stack. Payout starts at 10. I raise the max to try and steal the 400 blind, but the BB would have none of it. Flop was J89 rainbow. I bet the max again and the BB again called. TPTK wasn't too bad and the turn was a meaningless offsuit 2 that completed the rainbow. I still like my jack so I get the rest of the way in. BB calls and turns over KTs, calling with an outside straight draw. I can't fault him, he had 50K chips to my 9K, so I couldn't hurt him that bad no matter what. He of course caught his King on the river to beat my Jacks. 12th place when I could easily have folded past the bubble and made a 5x profit at least. I should know better than to play AJ in that position, or to attemt a blind steal with the smallest stack at the table. Winning it would have virtually guaranteed me 7th place or better, and the money got much better at that place. So I gambled, and lost. Oh well. At least I didn't rebuy or add on. 165 people can't say that.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Well, I noticed a lot of people who commented on Iggy's site (http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com/) that they enjoyed the Blogger Tournament because the quality of play was so much higher and you don't have to put up with people going all in with crappy hands. I only have one thing to say to that...

What the fuck?

It started when I, in the chip lead at the time, called an all in with 88, and the all in player held....72....the HAMMER! Of course it won when he hit the 2 on the flop and the 7 on the river.

I had gotten the lead when I called a pre-flop raise with TT and spiked a T on the river. The other player goes all in on the turn with his 99, and is drawing dead against my set of tens.

After my foolish attempt to defeat the hammer, I called an all-in pre flop raise with my QQ. Raiser shows TT and catches a T on the flop.

I call another all-in pre flop soon after that with AK, he shows AJ and catches a J on the river.

I played a few hands from the button when the big blind slow played Aces and Kings two rounds in a row. He slow played the aces against 5 (FIVE!) players. Quality poker there.

I expected to play against better players than normal. I mean, even if most of these people (they got 133, which is a TON more than they expected) don't write about poker in blogs, at least they READ blogs and learn something about poker, right?

NOPE. I saw all the same awful plays over and over again that I see playing in all the Aquariums. Maybe they were just screwing around a lot because they were slumming in such a small tournament. There were some quality players there, and I assume they did very well.

Best hand of the night was when I knocked out DoubleAs (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/.) I held A7 in the big blind and DoubleAs was on the button. He attempted a blind steal, raising from 200 to 600. I called quickly and the flop was A74. I checked, and he bet 1000. I put him all in and flipped over my A7, reducing him to 2 outs that never came. The worst possible flop for him, there was no escape from that trap.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

I was supposed to travel to Kansas City last weekend for my monthly home game with the gang at King Lucky's house, plus some marathon casino poker. I had taken Monday off of work, so I was ready for some serious poker. Unfortunately it never happened, but it's a very small disappointment.

I was on the phone with King Lucky Friday night, sweating him in a Stud8 tournament on Poker Stars. I was enjoying the action and increasing my Stud knowledge at the same time. King Lucky was hanging in there, stealing hands here and there to stay in front of the blinds. I was on my speaker phone and he was on his, and he told me he was going to step away from the phone for a minute. Not unusual, he sneaks out for a smoke occasionally. A few moments later I heard some noises on the other end of the phone, and then I heard touch tones. Only three numbers, and it sounded like 911. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself. 911 is never good. "I'm still here," I said, knowing that something was going on. "I need to go, something's wrong with my Mom," he said. He was very clearly rattled, forgetting that I was even on the line. I hung up, but I knew things were really REALLY bad.

King Lucky has been taking care of his mother for more than 5 years. Every day he would get her out of bed, move her to her TV room, feed her, basically do everything for her. Once in a while after he put her to bed at night, he would head out to the casino for some gambling. That's the real reason for our late night poker room adventures. He wasn't able to leave during the day because he had to take care of his mom. He works from home, so his days are spent working and taking care of her. The casino is pretty much the only outside the home experience he has longer than an hour or so trip to the supermarket. It's the only time he socializes with other people in person, except for the monthly poker game he hosts. Things hadn't been going well with her lately. She was not eating, and practically wasting away. He told me his back was bothering him after he had to literally carry her to the doctor recently when she had a problem with her leg.

He called me back Saturday Morning, because he knew I was going to leave to drive to Kansas City around noon, and he wanted to catch me before I left. He told me that he checking on his Mom when she mysteriously passed out. She was completely non-responsive so he called the paramedics and did CPR until they arrived. They could not revive her and she passed away that night.

In one way it is sort of a relief, as it seemed his mother was suffering and was a great burden on him. I never once heard him complain about having to take care of her. But I knew there were things that he wanted to do that he wasn't able to because of his responsibilty. But it is still very difficult to lose your mom. He also lost his father earlier this year. I can't imagine how difficult it is to go through that kind of thing twice in one year.

I talked to King Lucky today, just before he left his home to travel to St. Louis for the funeral. He seems to be handling things very well, but I wouldn't expect anything differently from him. I'm not sure how I would handle the situation he has been in for the last year, or even the last 5 years. I do know for sure that I never met anyone that handled the resposibilty better and more nobly than he did. I can't think of anyone I respect more than I respect him for that.

Flopped a set of queens, but wasn't worried about the spades or the straight. When the kings paird on the turn, I wasn't worried about the spades or the straight at all. I should have been worried about the board pairing, but I wasn't.

Well, I received Queens, or "ladies," or "The Hilton Sisters," or (my favorite) "Four Tits" twice tonight. Once I played them right, once I played them wrong.

First time was at "The Aquarium." I got QQ in early position and limped. Normally I would raise pre-flop with queens, but I had just been talking about queens with KingLucky and we talked about how TJ Cloutier says you should play queens like a middle pair. Two spots after my limp a player raised to $3. Another player called and the original raiser was a bit of a maniac, so I re-raised. I was trying to isolate the maniac, so I raised almost all in (pot limit). Both players called the $12 raise. I hit a queen on the flop and pushed the rest of my stack in, a big $1.12. Both called of course, and my set of queens held against AA and KQ. A Pauly ( http://taopoker.blogspot.com/) special, Aces cracked by The Hilton Sisters. I should win something.

The next time I got queens was at Royal Vegas. I raised to $2 pre-flop this time and again got raised, this time by a "raise or fold" bettor who pushed me to $7.50. Player 3 calls and I call. Flop is Jack High with one club, so I push all in for $30. Mr. Raise-or-Fold says "nice bet" and folds and Player 3 calls with A5 of clubs. Runner runner clubs come and I am busted. Raise-or-Fold said he dropped AK. These fish and their flushes, completely insane.

So I played my Queens COMPLETELY wrong and won $40, then played them exactly right and lost $30.

He played aces, in early position, and NEVER ONCE bet them. He did call when he knew he was beat, in the desperate hope I was bluffing with a 10. And this was at an incredibly LAGgy table where any and every pre-flop bet was called, and nearly every pot was bluffed at. And he sits on his aces.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

I've got Q5c on the big blind and I get to see the flop for free early in a Limit tourney (freeroll). The flop is QK5 rainbow. I bet, two callers. Turn is a 10, I bet again, player one calls, player 2 folds. River is a K and I check, getting counterfeited on the river. Player one bets and I call, he shows QJ to out kick me.

Player two complains about folding his King and says to player one "You suck." I defend player one, saying he had second pair and an outside straight draw, so it was a legit call. Player two says something about how bad a play it was and he should have known he was beaten until he got lucky on the river.

Later in the tournament, around bubble time and the limits are 150/300 and I raise UTG with A8 suited. Flop is Ace high with a a Jack. I'm betting and player 2 is the button, calling all the way until he is all in. Turn King and River Queen makes his K10 into an ace high straight, and I say "You suck." He starts complaining back and I say "I'm only using your own criteria to judge you."

He had almost the exact same hand as player one in the first hand, except he had second pair and an INSIDE straight draw, yet called all the way to the river. The stakes were much higher, he had a WORSE draw by half, yet he called all the way with a pair of kings, and should have known I had at least an ace.

I'm sure in his mind he is a better player than player one. Even better than me, since he eventually outlasted me in the tournament. Really he's just a lucky hypocrite.

Monday, October 04, 2004

There's been a death in my family. It's not like I should be surprised my computer died when I named it "Kenny" after Kenny McCormack. (Oh my god, they killed Kenny!) But it was still quite a blow to me. Kenny's been with me for amost 3 years, which is a long long time for me and one computer.

It started Friday night. I was playing a tournament and talking to KingLucky on the phone when I opened up Internet Explorer to check something, I can't remember what. Kenny just locked up and wouldn't respond to anything. That is very odd behavior for Kenny as he has been solid as a rock for a long time. I rebooted, rejoined my tourney after missing my big blind, and everything went normally. Saturday afternoon, my very next visit to the computer room after going to bed, saw Kenny with a blue screen. Kenny has never had a blue screen before. Reboot attempts were futile. He would get to the windows startup screen and freeze. Safe mode was no good. One time he booted up correctly but locked up. I was late for a tee time so I shut Kenny down by holding the power button for 5 seconds and took off for golf. Maybe the cool time will make Kenny feel better.

When I returned to Kenny, he was running, locked up during windows startup. "Weird, I thought I turned him off, I guess I forgot." I turned Kenny off again and went to bed. In the morning, Kenny was on again. I was on the way to go shopping with Mrs. DuggleBogey, so I shut Kenny off and left. When I returned from shopping, Kenny was on yet again. This time, though, there was no video at all. All my reboot attempts produced no video response. An old, yet still functioning, video card produced no difference. A different monitor produced the same results. Kenny was in fact DEAD.

So I ordered a replacement for Kenny. I probably could have spent a few days troubleshooting and would have started with a new motherboard, but it was so much easier to take a chunk of cash from my poker accounts and just buy a new complete system. A Compaq. My brother works for Compaq/HP/whatever they are called now, I think his original job was with Digital. So at least I am keeping it in the family. The other benefit is that my homemade machines tend to be LOUD and I hope this machine has some proprietary quietness that I never put much of a priority on until Mrs. DuggleBogey said it sounded like there was a jet airliner landing in the computer room.

So I am relegated to an old PC that Mrs. Dugglebogey used before she got a Compaq Laptop for school. How slow is the processor? At one point I had this computer in the living room and the CPU fan was making a funny noise so I removed it and figured if it overheated, so be it. It NEVER overheated so it doesn't require a CPU fan. If you remember those days, you know how slow this PC is. But it runs Party Poker well enough, and honestly, isn't that all a computer is for?